Building communities through Story, Music, and Red Fife Wheat

Sharon Rempel advocates for a world that honors cultural traditions, diversity, and abundance, gained through collaboration and caring for each other.  She is systems thinker, and wonderful community builder, in ways that acknowledge the historic relationship between people, plant, and place. Sharon is the visionary godmother of today’s Red Fife heritage wheat movement in Canada, […]

Level Ground Trading: Linking sustainability to long-term relationships

You go to the store.  You look for the fairly traded coffee.  You make the purchase.  What now?  Who benefits from your purchase?  Sure, you’re a satisfied consumer.  And, it’s more than just the coffee tasting good. You’ve just, through your purchase, contributed to a making the world a better, fairer place.  Really?  Have you […]

Including the "gutter" will help authenticate your organization's story

Scott McCloud understands what makes comics tick.  He’s gained that insight through his work as a comic artist, and his ongoing exploration into the why comics work.  I’ve read a couple of his books Understanding Comics (his best known book and which I highly recommend) and Re-inventing Comics.  His storytelling has shifted to the online […]

How all things connect: Adapting to unintended consequences in Hagonoy, Philippines

Rice farming was the main agricultural activity in Hagony, a Philippines coastal community, at least up to the 1980s. It was around that time that the salinity of the water started to rise; eventually to levels unacceptable for growing rice. Many believe the salinity increase stems from drainage canals and dikes built in the 1970s […]

Trying to balance conservation and development in San Antonio, Zambales, Philippines

Melchor Ventura is the Planning & Development Officer for San Antonio, a Municipality in Zambales province, Philippines. He is also involved in the eGov4MD project; an international collaborative, orchestrated by the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP), bringing together various Filipino organizations, municipalities, and foreign nonprofits (e.g., CESO). The project will help Filipino municipalities […]